Dead Ringers: Volumes 1-3

by Darlene Gardner

“Hunter was poisoned?” Max seems genuinely surprised. “Where did you hear that?”

  “At the hospital yesterday.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was too busy defending myself.”

  He reaches out and trails a finger over the faint bruise on my cheek. “You didn’t do a very good job of that.”

  The warm shiver his touch produces annoys me. Ditto for his deliberate misunderstanding of my meaning. “I wasn’t talking about defending myself against Adair. I meant the argument I had with you in the elevator.”

  “That Hunter was poisoned proves I’m right,” he says. “I told you he was bad news.”

  “Hold up.” I’m not in the mood to inform Max he was also right about Hunter using a bogus last name. “You think Hunter brought this on himself?”

  “Yeah, I do,” he says. “This thing with Hunter, it’s got nothing to do with the other stuff going on in Midway Beach. The guy’s unpredictable. Maybe he even swallowed something on purpose.”

  “Really? That’s your theory?”

  “Got a better one?”

  “Depends. Did Hunter buy anything at the concession stand?”

  Max takes off his sunglasses and gives me a hard look. “I don’t like the guy, Jade, but I didn’t poison him.”

  If I wasn’t so mixed up about the truth, I’d think Max was telling it. Except I can’t shake the feeling that Max’s dislike of Hunter has roots in a shared past he won’t admit they have. “Then maybe Adair poisoned him. Hunter ordered some food, right?”

  “I honestly don’t know. When I noticed how steamed she was, I gave them some space. But I can’t see Adair poisoning anyone.” He shakes his head. “We’re getting off track. We’re supposed to be solving our own problems.”

  He’s right. Getting abducted and losing time trumps getting poisoned when we’re the ones who experienced the abduction and time loss.

  “Okay, then. Seems to me our next move is getting inside that cabin in Wilder Woods.” Now that I’ve brought up the subject, I’ve got to ask him the next question even though it pains me. “Did you get that invite from Adair yet?”

  “What invite?” Maia is suddenly standing over us in a teeny two-piece that barely covers her. “Is Adair having a party she didn’t tell me about?”

  “Like Adair would tell me if she was having a party,” I say.

  “Then what were you two talking about?” Maia sits down on the blanket beside us, acting unaware that she’s intruding. “It looked like pretty heavy stuff.”

  “You know what they say about looks.” Max smiles at her. “They can be deceiving.”

  Maia scowls. “Yeah, but—”

  Screams interrupt her. They’re coming from near the pier, down at the surf line. I stand up, shielding my eyes from the sunlight slipping through the top of my sunglasses. At least a half dozen people are gathered, pointing at something in the water.

  Max and Maia stand, too.

  “I think someone’s caught in the current,” Max says.

  Julian. Where is he? Lots of boys Julian’s age are playing in the surf. None of them are Julian. My heart compresses like it’s caught in a vice. But Julian knows not to swim near the pier, where the currents are unpredictable. Doesn’t he?

  “What is it?” Max touches my shoulder.

  “My brother, I don’t see him.” I take off toward the ocean, ignoring the hot sand burning my bare feet.

  Please, God, I pray. Please let Julian be okay.

  Max passes me, his arms pumping, his feet digging into the sand. Beyond where the people are gathered, a head surfaces from the deep water. Whoever is struggling to keep alive out there has dark hair. Like Julian. I spot his friend Tommy in the crowd. Tommy’s pointing and screaming.

  Julian isn’t with him.

  It feels like something exploded in my chest. My heartbeat thrashes in my ear. I drive myself forward on legs that suddenly feel weak, refusing to stop or even slow down. I’m getting closer, but I’m still too far away.

  Please, please, please. Don’t let it be my brother.

  The dark head disappears, then reappears again. Is that two times? Or three? Is it true that a drowning person resurfaces only three times before hope is lost? My lungs burn, but I try to pick up speed.

  Please, someone help whoever it is.

  But none of the gawkers venture from shore. Their feet seem to be stuck in the sand. It’s well known the currents near the pier are treacherous. Only a true hero would risk himself to save someone else, and in my life heroes have been in short supply.

  But, wait! Somebody is in the ocean, cutting through the water with powerful strokes.

  Max reaches the crowd of onlookers before I do. He pushes his way through the mass of humanity, high steps through the shallow water and dives into a wave. In the deeper water, the hero draws closer to the drowning person. I reach Tommy and put my hand on his shoulder, whirling him around.

  “Where’s Julian?” My voice sounds shrill and unnatural.

  Tears fill Tommy’s eyes. Wordlessly, he points toward the deadly water.

  A new wave of horror washes over me at the confirmation. The ocean roars in my ears, angry and merciless. I run through the deepening water, frustrated at my slow progress. I’m knee-deep when a wave knocks me over. Saltwater rushes over my head. I swallow some and come up coughing, pushing the wet hair back from my face.

  The first swimmer is beyond where the waves break, at about the place where I spotted Julian. I don’t see my brother. The swimmer’s head disappears beneath the water. And then I don’t see anything at all but the sun shimmering on the water and sea gulls circling overhead.

  “No!” I cry.

  I’m about to start swimming when a head surfaces from the deep water. No, not one head. Two! The swimmer gets Julian in a cross-chest carry, like a lifeguard, and sidestrokes toward the shore. A third person reaches them—Max—and there are three heads above the water, moving as one.

  Another wave rolls toward me and breaks. I struggle to stay upright, straining to see if my brother is moving through the salt spray. I’m too far away, and the waves are too numerous. I wade back toward the shore at an angle, stopping every few seconds to check the state of the rescue, until I reach the gathered crowd. Progress is slow, but the trio draws closer and closer to the shore. And, then, finally they’re standing in the surf. Max and the other person—the hero—support Julian between them.

  I run toward them, the weight of the water around my ankles slowing me down. Over the sound of the surf, I hear my brother cough. My knees nearly buckle.

  Thank you, God.

  I don’t only owe God thanks. I owe the hero a debt of gratitude my family will never be able to repay. Max is on one side of Julian. On the other is a man in a woman’s bathing suit. No, not a man. A tall woman with broad shoulders and a hulking walk.

  It’s Roxy.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next twenty-four hours are a new sort of torture. I wish Mom would yell at me for losing track of Julian, but she doesn’t. She does go on and on about Saint Roxy, disregarding all the lies Roxy’s told about me.

  It’s no better at the carnival. Maia gives the already-hot story her special treatment, spreading it all over Midway Beach until everybody is praising Roxy for saving my brother’s life. I’m grateful, too. Except nobody else seems to realize Roxy’s like Batman’s nemesis Two Face, half-good and half-evil.

  My shift drags, without a single sighting of Max. Our make-believe romance must be on hold while he angles for an invite to Adair’s cabin.

  I’m totally cool with that.

  My insomnia has nothing to do with visions of Max and Adair getting naked. Neither does my lack of appetite.

  “You gonna eat that?” Julian’s eyeing the pepperoni and sausage pizza on my plate like a vulture about to swoop in for road kill. Mom stopped home for lunch, surprising us with an extra-large pie from Mario’s.

  I push my plate toward him. “Have at it.”


  He bites into the pizza like it’s his first piece instead of his fourth.

  Mom’s at the sink rinsing her plate, watching him chew. Since yesterday’s near drowning, she’s been watching him a lot.

  Suri prances into the kitchen on her tiptoes, ballerina style. “Someone’s here for Jade.”

  The doorbell’s broken. Since I didn’t hear anyone knock, I assume she means someone’s waiting on the front porch. Until Max follows her into the kitchen. He wears shorts, sandals and a blue T-shirt that matches his eyes. The ones my mother thinks are kind.

  “I hope it’s okay that Suri let me in,” he says, the comment directed at the paranoid woman he won over even before he attempted to rescue Julian.

  “Of course.” My mother’s voice softens. “You’re always welcome here, Max.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. G.” He grins at my mother, then ruffles Julian’s hair. “Hey, bud.”

  Julian’s mouth is stuffed with pizza. He waves.

  Max laughs and crosses over to where I sit at the kitchen table. Bending at the waist, he touches his lips to mine before straightening. “Hey, gorgeous.”

  Goose bumps raise on my skin. My tongue feels thicker than a bowl of oatmeal. What is it about him that renders me speechless?

  “Well, well, well.” My mother abandons her usual monotone, putting a wealth of meaning into the words. “You two seem to be getting along.”

  My face couldn’t feel any hotter if I were a victim of the Salem witch trials.

  “Getting along great.” Max rubs a shoulder left bare by my sleeveless top. My goose bumps multiply. “We’ve both got Monday off so I came over to see if Jade wanted to hang.”

  He couldn’t have texted?

  “I can’t.” I shrug off his hand. “Babysitting duty.”

  “Not anymore,” Mom says. “My clients cancelled.”

  “Then Jade is off the hook.” Max’s warm hand squeezes my shoulder, doing nothing to rid it of the goose bumps. “Fantastic.”

  “I do need you to be available tomorrow, Jade,” Mom says in a conversational style, turning on the faucet in the sink and rinsing her plate before glancing up at me. “I made arrangements for all four of us to visit your father tomorrow.”

  Like hell! Choking back a spate of angry words, I spring up from the table so fast I get lightheaded. I steady myself, grab Max’s hand and practically drag him out of the kitchen. Normally I’d take the time to change clothes, maybe brush my hair, change my shoes. But today I’ve got to get out of there.

  “Bye, Mrs. G. We’ll see you later, kids,” Max calls, like he’s speaking for both of us. When we’re out of the house and moving down the sidewalk, he asks, “What was all that about?”

  Like I’m gonna share my family’s ugly little secrets with him. I drop his hand, head to the pickup, yank open the door and snap, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Max moves unhurriedly to the other side of the pickup and takes his time settling behind the wheel and starting the car. While Max pulls into the street, I stare out the passenger-side window.

  Two doors down from our house, the three Carmichael girls, none of them older than twelve, pile into the red convertible their dad drives. Since he bought the car, the girls are always running out of the house after him, begging him to take them along.

  “I take it you refuse to visit your father in prison,” Max says after a few moments.

  “Stepfather.” I turn away from the idyllic scene at the neighbors’ house to glare at Max. “What part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ don’t you understand?”

  “Okay, okay.” He lifts one hand off the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender. “We’ve got plenty of other things to talk about.”

  “Yeah.” My deep breath feels ragged, like I swallowed a knife with serrated edges. “You haven’t told me what happened at Adair’s cabin.”

  His head swivels toward me, an indentation appearing between his eyebrows. “I’m not psychic, you know.”

  “What does being psychic have to do with it?”

  “We didn’t get to the cabin yet,” he says.

  “That’s where we’re headed?”

  “Well, yeah. I told you I want to get inside and have a look around.”

  “But you said...” What exactly had Max said? We’d been strategizing yesterday when we realized Julian was drowning. In all the commotion, we’d never picked up the conversation. Max had worked last night even though it was my day off. When I didn’t hear from him at closing time, I assumed he went to the cabin with Adair. “You were working on getting an invitation from Adair.”

  “Not anymore.” The traffic light we’re approaching turns yellow. Instead of stomping on the gas to beat the light, like a normal teenager, Max slows down. “Not when I’m your boyfriend.”

  I’m not about to analyze why relief hits me. “Fake boyfriend.”

  “If I have to be a fake boyfriend,” he says with gusto, “I’m gonna be the best fake boyfriend I can be.”

  I giggle. I can’t help it. He smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. It’s crazy. Even though he’s not as good-looking as Hunter, when his eyes sparkle like they are now, resisting him is almost impossible. At the moment, there’s no reason to try.

  “So, fake boyfriend, how do we get inside the cabin?”

  The light turns green. Max looks both ways before gradually pressing the gas pedal and pulling into the intersection. “You’ll see.”

  Thirty minutes later, Max drives down the now-familiar bumpy dirt road that cuts through the tangle of trees leading to the cabin in Wilder Woods. The road should seem less spooky in the daylight, yet only slivers of the sun shine through the leaves and branches. We finally reach the cabin in the clearing. The light does it no favors, exposing the weathered wood and making it appear almost shabby. We get out of the car to silence broken only by the faint calls of some songbirds.

  “I don’t suppose you know how to pick a lock?” Max sounds hopeful.

  “That’s your plan? To break in?”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  I’ve seen The People Under the Stairs, so I’ve got a bit of an issue with home invasion. “Nope,” I lie. “No problem. But I can’t pick locks.”

  “Me, neither.”

  I follow him to the front of the house, hoping there aren’t any mutated cannibals on the other side of the door. It’s hot and humid. Whatever animals rustle through Wilder Woods when the sun goes down are quiet. The only signs of life are the mosquitoes buzzing around us. I swat at one on my arm. “Then how do we get in?”

  Max scratches his head. “We can always throw a rock through the window.”

  Vandalism on top of breaking and entering? Doesn’t he watch any horror movies at all? The worse the offense, the harsher the karmic punishment. We’re entering monsters peeling off our skin territory. “There must be another way.”

  “Maybe there’s a key around here someplace.” Max runs his fingertips over the top of the door frame but comes up empty. Bending over, he lifts the rubber doormat to reveal nothing but dirt. He pauses, an odd expression on his face, then rummages under a bush and picks up a rock.

  I jump back, out of the way of glass I expect to shatter.

  Instead of throwing the rock, he twists and it comes apart. Inside one half is a key. I should have guessed it was a hide-a-key rock. I’ve seen them before, but this one wasn’t visible from where we’re standing. “How did you know to look under that bush?”

  “I’m not sure.” He turns the key over. “A memory, maybe.”

  He unlocks the door and pushes it open. Hot air engulfs us, along with the stale smell of a place that’s been sitting vacant. There’s no light switch, but enough natural light streams through the door and a back window that it’s possible to see.

  Max does a slow three hundred sixty degree turn. The inside of the cabin is rustic and furnished with heavy wooden pieces, the focal point a brick fireplace. Max moves toward it, and I follow close
behind, keeping an ear cocked for imprisoned children living in the walls. I hate Wes Craven. Mounted on one side of the fireplace is the head of an eight-point buck. On the other is a coyote, its sharp teeth bared in a snarl.

  My quick intake of breath comes out as a loud gasp.

  “What is it?” Max asks.

  “The coyote.” I back away from it. The taxidermist has done such a good job that it seems alive. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “Have you ever been inside the cabin with Adair?”

  I shake my head. “I came here once with Adair, but I stayed in the car.”

  “Could you have been here those days you were missing?”

  “I think so.” The cabin feels familiar in a way I can’t pinpoint. Familiar and confining. My chest tightens. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  I stumble toward the door, the toe of my tennis shoe catching on the rug. Before I can go sprawling, Max grabs me and sets me upright. Together, we walk outside into the light. Despite the heat, I’m shaking.

  “Are you all right?” He rubs my shoulder, concern coming off him in waves. “Did you remember something else?”

  I struggle to get my lungs working again. Now that we’re outside, the panic that gripped me inside the cabin is fading. “I remembered wanting to get out of the cabin. But I couldn’t leave.”

  “Like someone held you against your will?”

  “That sounds right.” I’ve never been close to claustrophobic before today. “But what does that mean? That Adair or somebody in her family is involved?”

  “Not necessarily,” he says. “You saw how easily we got inside the cabin. Anybody could have found the key.”

  Since the hide-a-key was under the bush, I wouldn’t bet on that. But who’s to say the rock is always as well hidden as it was today? An out-of-the-way cabin certainly seems like a good place to stash someone, especially in the winter when this section of Wilder Woods would have been deserted.

  “What about you?” I ask. “Was there anything inside the cabin that looked familiar?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t here.”

  I knead the space between my eyebrows, trying to rub away the headache that’s blossoming. “Why can’t we remember?”